The Legacy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Exploring Frankenstein's place in the history of sci-fi & the role Shelley played in developing the genre for centuries to come.
Hey!
I hope you’re having a good week. We’ve got just a few days to go until the first book club discussion, and I can’t wait! Discussions will start off in the Substack chat this Saturday 2nd November, starting at 6pm GMT/2pm ET - just two days to go!
Please do double check the time zones - I know the clocks change on a different week in the US. GMT is the time zone to make sure you match up with because that’s where I’m based!
A reminder for all the information about how the discussion will work can be found in the post I shared last week.
I wanted to write something today as a final post ahead of the discussion. I’ve been wondering what to write about, having finished reading the book in the past few days. I settled on exploring the legacy of Frankenstein and its broader place in the history of literature.
How groundbreaking was Frankenstein?
The very first edition of Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818, and as was the case 200 years ago, it was assumed to have been written by a man. Only three years later, when the second edition was published, was Mary Shelley credited as being the author. When Blackwood’s Magazine discovered this, they observed that, 'For a man it was excellent, but for a woman it was wonderful!’. I’ll let you decide how appropriate a response that is!
Frankenstein broke new ground in so many different ways. Not only was it - shockingly - written by a woman (women can write too, apparently!?) but it also formed a new style of gothic fiction and is considered by many to be the very first science fiction novel. There are earlier novels and stories that have elements of sci-fi within, but Frankenstein was the first to popularise and inspire many of the novels that followed in the genre.
Gothic novels were extremely popular from the late 18th Century onwards, starting with The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole in 1764. Gothic novels were heavily invested in horror and the supernatural. While the former is true of Frankenstein somewhat (the horror in Gothic novels is largely in descriptions of the setting), the monster’s origins are not considered supernatural, but rather scientific and extremely deliberate.
It’s through this deliberate scientific creation that began the science fiction genre, made increasingly popular later in the 1800s thanks to Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Frankenstein was also the first example of the ‘mad scientist’ trope used commonly throughout modern science fiction.
Frankenstein can also be thought of as a dystopian novel, itself a subgenre of science fiction. This is because the main ethical question posed by the novel is not ‘could we?’ but rather ‘should we?’, and what the effect of unchecked scientific advancements might look like.
The influence of science & history
The 17th and 18th Centuries gave birth to the Age of Enlightenment, a time when new thinkers would question religious authority and consider new, often radical principles to push forward social improvement. It’s likely that Shelley was heavily influenced by these changes when she wrote the novel (the Age of Enlightenment would end just a few years prior to writing Frankenstein).
The 1700s also saw revolts in America with the slade trade becoming a major issue for many civilians. Frankenstein is likely to have been somewhat of a commentary on slavery, given how it examined the way in which humans treat those who look visibly different to those around them. Frankenstein’s Monster is, after all, treated horrically by all those he comes across.
As the secularisation of Western society developed, so did attitudes towards science and the wish to understand more about the physical universe. Experimentation became an increasing method for developing knowledge, and science grew as a philosophy of the era. In 1801 the Royal Institution in London even opened lectures on the latest scientific discoveries to the public for the very first time.
As science grew to become an important part of modern life, many discoveries emerged, in particular from the use of electricity. The original story that inspired the basic concept of Frankenstein was that of Luigi Galvini’s work in reanimation, in which he used electrical currents on dead animals to make them move. At the time, many debated whether electricity was itself a life force, and whether it could theoretically be used to bring people back from the dead.
In the introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley refers to a conversation between Byron and Shelley during their time in Switzerland. This conversation was about the use of galvanism and reanimation, and whether ‘the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth.’ You can read the introduction in full here if your copy of the novel doesn’t have this.
The legacy of Frankenstein
When we reflect on Frankenstein, I think it’s important to think about it differently to a novel that you would read to simply enjoy (though people do enjoy it, of course). To me, it’s more important to think about the broader questions raised, and how actually many of them are eerily similar to those we face today.
As I mentioned previously, Shelley’s work was revolutionary at the time. It brought about the mad scientist concept and the idea that the human body could be violated for scientific advancements. Shelley was the first to tap into the idea that science does not always lead to something good. That a scientist’s experiments can and would go wrong, and that we should be asking the ‘should we’ question about the application of certain scientific developments.
I have various issues with Frankenstein as a novel to simply read and enjoy, which I’ll share during the discussion this weekend. But the reason that it remains a timeless classic is because of its ability to address questions about knowledge and the unknown. Questions that today might have a different focus (genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and robotics for example) but the same overarching concern: is this really worth it? And what does the end goal look like?
Many of us, after all, are intrigued by the potential scientific advancements that humanity makes and yet share the concern about how such advancements would be used. Advancements in physics saw the birth of the atomic bomb, while developments in chemistry led to the horrific use of Agent Orange.
Unfortunately, humanity has proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted with all developments in science (not always of course, because science has obviously performed countless acts of good). This is where the ‘could we?’ or ‘should we?’ question is important. Should we create vaccinations that eradicate deadly diseases like smallpox and measles? Yes, of course. Should we create chemical weapons that decimate innocent people in wars? To any sane person: no.
Frankenstein was truly a groundbreaking novel, and as science fiction and dystopian novels have developed, they continue to ask many of the same questions that Mary Shelley was the first to pose. She was, in many ways, a truly visionary figure in the genre: a young woman who, with this remarkable novel, redefined the boundaries of literature and created an entirely new genre of speculative writing.
Not bad for a 19-year-old, huh?
What would you like to talk about this weekend?
I’ve said that it will just be me starting threads in the chat this weekend, but I am open to discussing things that you think are particularly notable.
If you’d like to suggest a topic of discussion for the book club this weekend, you can do so via the link below (where I’ve also included some examples).
Looking forward to discussing this with you soon, I know I’ve certainly got a lot that I can’t wait to talk about!
Take care & I’ll speak to you soon.